Arizona hoping to Bowl over NFL owners

When the Arizona Super Bowl Host Committee makes its presentation Tuesday to the NFL owners in Atlanta in its bid for the 2012 game, it believes it will be playing with a trump card.

"Last year (in a bid for the 2011 game), we were going in on the promise that we would deliver a good Super Bowl," committee president Bob Sullivan said.

"This year, we're going in on the report card. We're kind of promoting the fact that the report card is in and (we received an) A-plus. We think that that's a huge advantage for us."

Feedback on Super Bowl XLII includes a report by Arizona State's W.P. Carey School of Business that found that February's big game pumped $500.6 million into the local economy, a Super Bowl record.

Add to that the Valley's beautiful winter weather, plenty of resorts and hotels and the promise of a more developed landscape in 2012, and Sullivan is hoping it will be hard for owners to say no to Arizona two years in a row.

If they do, they will either reward Indianapolis for its new stadium, slated to open this season, or head back to Houston to do the Texas two-step.

When asked if he had a sense of how the voting would turn out, Sullivan said there's no way to gauge it.

"You don't know how they're going to vote. You don't know what's going to sway their opinion," he said.

Indianapolis' state-of-the-art, $625 million stadium, which features a retractable roof, could do the trick.

"They like to say 'Thank you' to owners who build new stadiums," Sullivan said.

Over the past eight years, Glendale, Detroit, Houston and Tampa have hosted Super Bowls partly because of new stadiums, and the $1 billion stadium being built in Arlington, Texas, is a major reason why Dallas landed the 2011 game.

Dallas' gain could undercut Houston's chance. Houston is like Phoenix in many ways - a warm-weather city with similar amenities and a relatively new stadium. It last hosted a Super Bowl in 2004, but it may have to wait longer if owners are reluctant to have their showcase event in the same state two years in a row, something which has happened only twice before.

Super Bowls XXI (Pasadena) and XXII (San Diego) were both in California, while II and III were both in Miami. It's scheduled to happen a third time over the next two years, with XLIII in Tampa, Fla., and XLIV in Miami.

The Arizona contingent is hoping such history will give them the advantage over Houston, and that weather will do the same when it comes to Indianapolis. Cold-weather cities have hosted only three Super Bowls (Detroit twice and Minneapolis).

If those factors aren't enough to sway the owners, the Arizona committee has a few others it will present.

"One of the things we're trying to impress upon the NFL owners is if they come back for 2012, the landscape will have changed out here," committee chairman Mike Kennedy said.

"The experience will be different. There will be light rail. We'll have much more development and nightlife and restaurants in Glendale. There will be new hotels in downtown Phoenix. Construction will be completed so that downtown Phoenix will be more accessible. There will be more development of the ASU campus downtown.

"We're going to enjoy a lot of fulsome development in Arizona over the next four years so that their experience in 2012 will be even better than it was in 2008.

"We hope folks had a good time. We hope to remind them of their good time. We hope that will translate into some votes."